Episode 7: Navigating Risk, Race, Gender, and the Outdoors in American Adrenaline Narratives

Posted Date: December 24, 2020

Episode Description: LAC member Hannah Matangos interviews Kristin Jacobson, Professor of American Literature, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Stockton University in New Jersey.  Jacobson researches what she terms “adrenaline narratives,” or perilous adventure stories. She and Hannah have a conversation about the ways race, gender, the pandemic, and the climate crisis converge in the American adrenaline narrative.

Guest Biography

Kristin J. Jacobson is a professor of American Literature, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Stockton University in New Jersey. She completed her Ph.D. at Penn State, her M.A. at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and her B.A. at Carthage College in Kenosha, WI. Her book Neodomestic American Fiction (2010, Ohio State University Press) examines contemporary domestic novels. Her current book The American Adrenaline Narrative (2020, University of Georgia Press) identifies a new genre of travel and environmental literature. The project defines and then examines the genre’s significant tropes from an ecofeminist perspective. She is the Dual Degree Advisor for the Literature (B.A.) and American studies (M.A.) programs at Stockton University.

Project Title: The American Adrenaline Narrative: Risk, Race, and Gender

Project Description: In the now clichéd “new normal” that defines our “extraordinary times” you likely weigh the risks of leaving home more consciously than you did before the pandemic. Each journey offers an expedition into a more ridiculous than sublime unknown: will the store have toilet paper? Scouring the aisle for disinfectant wipes, you dodge mask-less rulebreakers to keep yourself and your family safe. We are all, in a sense, becoming extreme endurance athletes. Perilous adventure stories—what I term adrenaline narratives—help us make sense of these extraordinary times and understand the cultural origins of the extreme narratives playing out before us. I propose a conversation about the ways race, gender, the pandemic, and the climate crisis converge in the American adrenaline narrative. These extreme narratives distill how to negotiate environmental risks, a key skill for living in the Anthropocene and the current pandemic. We see a “schizophrenic” narrative playing out in the extreme plotlines that shape our current experiences. As Jon Krakauer writes in Into the Wild, “it is easy, when you are young, to  believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want  something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.” Yet, Krakauer discovers in Into Thin Air that when given the opportunity to climb Everest, “boyhood dreams die hard…and good  sense be damned.” What shapes us and Krakauer—“good sense be damned”—is an American dream of rugged individualism and freedom. As our collective desiring natures collide, we would do well to remember the origins and risky lessons embedded in our tragic and triumphant adrenaline narratives.

Recommended Resources:

Social Media Accounts

Readings

Check out Dr. Jacobson’s book!
  • Abe Streep, “Dave Morton is Quitting Everest. Maybe. (It’s Complicated.),” Outside Online, (April 4, 2016).
  • Alvah Simon, North to the Night: A Spiritual Odyssey in the Arctic, (1998).
  • Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, (1998).
  • Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, (2012).
  • E. Chai Vasarhelyi, Free Solo, (2018).
  • Elizabeth A. Wheeler, Don’t Climb Every Mountain,
    Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
    Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer 2013), pp. 553-573.
  • Jane Jacobs, Death and Life Great American Cities, (1961). 
  • Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (1996).
  • –, Into Thin Air (1997).
  • Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness in the American Mind, (1967).